A Break from Space
by Silver33650
Summary: Just for fun. Bored, GLaDOS decides to fetch Wheatley from space for a quick, meaningless test. No, seriously. It's fun to be needlessly cruel.


**A/N: I've been on vacation, so I haven't been getting much accomplished. But here's something I wrote after reading a review from beastylex. It mentioned a phonebook, and suddenly inspiration. It's not much.**

Wheatley hadn't really been paying much attention to how he got there, but at any rate, he was now plugged into one of the core receptacles in a plain white test chamber. Somehow he'd ended up back at Aperture Science, and no matter it happened, he was glad.

Then he heard her voice, and that emotion quickly dissipated.

"I've decided that testing, even on a hopeless moron like yourself, is an opportunity I can't pass up."

Wheatley was worried already.

"Did you know that in human schools, children study thick books and then use the information stored in them to answer questions? Nothing about that sounds deadly at all, but since you're not human anyway, I decided it was worth trying out. So here." A thick book dropped in front of him. "It's called a phone book. Humans use it to find the numbers of people they wish to hold a conversation with, because apparently [insert sarcasm here]." She paused. "If you were wondering what that was, it was me being too lazy to finish that sentence with an appropriate rip on human culture, so just fill that in with whatever you think I would've said. It's part of my new Mad-Libs generator. Anyway, just read through every entry in that book, and I mean every entry."

He squinted at it. "Even the yellow pages?"

"Especially the yellow pages. There will be a test when you finish, and it will not be open book."

There was silence.

"Um, I've got a question."

She sighed. "What?"

"You do want me to read the inside of the book, right? That's where all the words are? Well, um, I'm not sure if I can do that because I can't really, well, I don't have a way of opening it."

Her voice was unsympathetic. "That is none of my concern."

"But... but how am I going to do well on this test? I wanted to get at least one question right. Maybe two. I mean, I wasn't expecting to do fantastically but I did want to do decently, you know, write my name at the top of the page, and put the date and all that."

"Did I mention there was a time limit? I'm sorry. I should have mentioned that earlier."

"Yeah, that would've been good to know. A little earlier." He stared at the phone book for a moment. "So, you're really not going to tell me how to-"

"Thirty seconds left."

"Aw, what? Come on!" He shook his optic irritably. "I haven't even-"

"Fifteen seconds."

"But-"

"Ten."

"That seemed a lot shorter than five-"

"Five."

"Okay, are you even counting correctly, because-"

"Zero. Time's up. Since you are currently inside a receptacle, your test will be administered through that so that I can more easily collect the results."

Wheatley heard voices in his head asking him questions.

_What is the phone number listed for the fifty-second name listed, and what is his name? Is it even a him?_

"Oh, um... lemme think... How about..."

"Did I mention this was a timed test? I'm sorry. I don't know why I keep forgetting to say that. Continue testing."

Wheatley panicked. "Um, how about... AAAAAAA. No? Well... um... I wish this was multiple choice, err... Um... Well... Oh! Phone numbers, right, they want numbers, not letters, so-"

"Time's up."

"What, already?"

"Well done. Here come the test results." She paused. "Well... the important thing is that you tried. I also gave this test to three other cores and... well, you didn't perform quite as well. Nowhere near as well, if I'm being honest. Did you know that humans give participation trophies to the children who didn't do as well as the other children on the team?"

"Am I going to get a trophy, then?" he asked. "See, the thing is, I'm not really sure where I would put it..."

"I wasn't going to give you a trophy. I was just sharing an amusing fact. If I were to give you a trophy, it would be for the lowest test score ever achieved. You actually earned a negative score. That's what it says. A negative score. I couldn't make that up if I tried. A lesser machine would probably explode from the contrdictory nature of a negative score, but luckily for you, I'm the most massive collection of wisdom and raw computational power that's ever existed, so it doesn't bother me."

"So, what was my score?"

A loud beep sounded."Oh, I'm sorry. I just deleted the record of your test. So I can't tell you."

"You're not going to tell me?"

"No."

"But, but..."

"Instead, I have a new game we can play. It's called Who-Gets-To-Live-At-The-End-And-Who-Doesn't, I mean, Punishment Roulette. Essentially, I spin a giant wheel, and whatever it lands on is what I do to you for your dismal performance."

A wheel was lowered down into the chamber. Every single option read "Back to Space," except for one very small one that said "The Room Where All the Robots Scream at You." Wheatley's optic narrowed.

"You know, I don't know why, but I really don't think I like this game."

"Well, let's just see what it lands on, shall we?"

A claw spun the wheel, and after a few short seconds it predictably landed on "Back to Space." Wheatley groaned.

"Oh, that's too bad. I bet you really wanted it to land on 'The Room Where All the Robots Scream at You.' But it didn't."

"Can't I have a mulligan?"

"No. Look on the bright side, though. The last person to spin the wheel was a human, and humans don't do very well in space. You, on the other hand, are quite capable of surviving without basic human needs. Forever."

"But-"

"Well, it was nice catching up. Give my regards to the space core. Have a good life. Or something."

And with that, she zapped him out of the receptacle and into a portal, launching him right back into orbit.

"Well," Wheatley muttered, floating aimlessly, "at least I don't have to put up with-"

"SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!"

"Never mind."


End file.
